Experience: that’s what separates the girls from the girl scouts

Well, kids, it's once more into the breach for the cinetrix. She punches another bunch of students' cards this afternoon when she screens Citizen Kane for the umpteenth time. Any of you out there have bright ideas for keeping it fresh--for me--I'm all ears.

Somewhat related:

FILMS and VIDEO TO SEEWhat this list is and what this list is not:The faculty of Visual and Environmental Studies have drafted the following list of titles which concentrators with a primary interest in film or video should try to see during their undergraduate years. This is not a list of cinema;s* greatest hits or of the best movies and videos of all time.Rather, it reflects a variety of criteria. Some works we consider great, others important, others influential. Not every title on the list represents a unanimous choice. We plan to revise the list periodically and welcome your comments and suggestions.

On April 5,
1968, less than 24 hours after Martin Luther King's assassination, the
city of Boston was in a state of turmoil. When James Brown arrived at
the airport to play his already scheduled show he was warned that the
mayor, fearing further unrest among the African American community,
planned to cancel the show. Brown assured the mayor that the
consequences would be much worse if the concert was called off. Not
only did the show go on as planned, public television station WGBH
broadcast the whole thing. It's an incredible historical document and a
fantastic performance by James Brown, who dedicated the show to Dr.
King’s memory and brought the raw emotions within himself and his
community to a searing head. At one point the restless crowd swarms the
stage and amidst the mayhem James Brown tells the cops to stay back and
calmly talks the crowd back into their seats. "This isn't how black
people should act."

[You can read the rest of this excellent synopsis of the backstage machinations originally recounted by J. Anthony Lucas in Common Groundhere. Let's just say Brother James got paid.]

The poorly edited page on the VH1.com site promises

Finally, 40 years after that remarkable and
historic moment, VH1 Rock Docs presents "The Night James Brown Saved
Boston", a film from David Leaf Productions. It tells the story of that
amazing night -- with rarely seen footage of the concert (until now,
that concert has been buried in the archives). Through those amazing
concert moments...and with the personal reminiscences of James Brown's
band members, colleagues (including his long-time manager Charles
Bobbit), awe-struck concert-goers (including Newsweek's David Gates),
the Boston city government officials and the pointed commentary of
several distinguished observers of African-American history (Dr. Cornel
West, Dr. Andrew Young, Rev. Al Sharpton) -- the dramatic and
emotionally-riveting story unfolds.

Ah, but Boston-dwellers can get a jump on the rest of the nation at the station that made it happen, WGBH,* this Monday, March 31. Duck out of work early and get yer asses over to Brighton, peeps.

The world premiere of
The Night James Brown Saved Boston, from director David Leaf(The U.S. Vs. John Lennon; Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson &
The Story of SMiLE),will be held March 31 at 6:30pm at WGBH’s new Brighton
studios. The event is free and open to the public; RSVP at
www.wgbh.org/events.

The world premiere screening will be followed by a panel discussion
and question and answer session featuring the documentary’s
director, David Leaf; Russell Morash, longtime WGBH producer and
director; Charles Bobbit, James Brown’s personal manager; and
Northeastern University professor of African-American Studies Dr.
Robert L. Hall.

Shout! Factory will be releasing it in
August as part of DVD box set called I Got The Feelin': James Brown In The
'60s.

*A little part of the cinetrix's soul dies every time she remembers that 'GBH's zip is no longer 02134.

The Movies by Women blog reminds us that Grace Lee and John Solomon's American Zombieopens in the City of Angels this weekend. [Tagline: We here. We're Dead. Get used to it!] You can even download a coupon that'll get you in for six dollars. That's a lot of brains for your buck. [Sorry.] And did I mention the Q&A with the directors... and the zombies?

So what the hell is American Zombie? The film's site is well worth a visit, offering not only the trailer but also Fun Zombie Facts* like "Zombies are pretty much critic proof" and Proust questionnaire-style profiles of the zombies.

For those pressed for time, here's the synopsis.

Filmmakers Grace Lee (”The Grace Lee Project”) and John Solomon
(”Nonsense Man”) team up to shoot a documentary about high-functioning
zombies living in Los Angeles and their struggles to gain acceptance in
human society.

Despite their wildly different working styles, Grace and John manage
to chronicle the hopes and dreams of four fascinating subjects: IVAN, a
convenience-store clerk who longs for a career in publishing; LISA, a
florist trying to recover her lost memories; JUDY, a hopeless romantic
who learns to accept her true nature; and JOEL, a committed political
activist striving for zombie rights. As Grace strives to get to know
the zombies “on their own terms,” John is eager to uncover their darker
side and rallies to get the crew permission to shoot at a three-day,
zombies-only retreat called Live Dead where the documentary takes an
unexpected – and dangerous – turn. What transpires there is beyond
anything the filmmakers could imagine, as they are forced to
re-evaluate their ideas about tolerance, identity politics and the
future of the human race.

American Zombie premieres in Los Angeles March 28th:

Laemmle’s Sunset 5
8000 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046

Showtimes: 12:30, 2:50, 5:10, 7:30 & 10:00

Q&A with Grace Lee and the zombies: Friday (3/28) and Saturday (3/29) after the 7:30PM show.

*If you've read this far, you deserve another Fun Zombie Fact. Zombie actors dislike zombie movies; they reject selling out and acting
"all zombie" for the Man. Zombies' favorite movie, according to a 1997
poll? "The Abyss."

How does it work? Visit the NAME THAT FILM Pool at Flickr. The pool was started by Flickr user BarelyFitz,
among others. Flickr users are invited to post unidentified movie
stills to the pool; they're also invited to post their guesses about
which movies other users' stills are from. When someone guesses
correctly, the film's title is added to the photo as a tag.

As of this posting, the pool has over 1,300 members and over 9,000 images.

After years of encouraging their fans to share "South Park,"
creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have set up a viable alternative to
the mass YouTube-based distribution of popular clips from the hit show:
They're just going to give the whole thing away on SouthParkStudios.com.

"We
got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the
time, so we gave ourselves a legal alternative," the duo quipped in a
statement.

The site offers every "South Park" episode including
the current one, which stays live for a week after its airdate and then
goes dark for the rest of the month, at which point it is added to the
site's back catalog. [via]

Ed Koch is back, and he brought HS with him. Hilarity ensues. And this time by "hilarity," I mean he describes a hand job as "wanking." You have been warned.

Irina PalmThis offbeat film covers a lewd subject but is never salacious. It opens in a Liverpool, England,
hospital room where a young boy, Olly (Corey Burke), lies dying of an unnamed
disease. With him are his mother,
Sarah (Siobhan Hewlett), his father, Tom (Kevin Bishop), and his grandmother,
Maggie (Marianne Faithfull).

The family is told that an experimental treatment for Olly is available
in Australia. The care itself would
be free, but all other expenses, including travel, hotels, meals, etc., would
have to be paid by the family. Their bank accounts and credit are exhausted, and they are unable to pay
the expected cost of 6,000 pounds.

Maggie, who will do anything to help her grandson, decides to look for a
job. She is ultimately hired by a
London sex establishment operated by Miki (Miki Manojlovic) where she services
men by wanking them. Known as Irina
Palm with the soft hands, she becomes an expert and men line up to be serviced
by her.

Maggie is ultimately found out by her son and friends, and their reactions
to her situation heighten your interest in the film. The final resolution regarding her son's
acceptance or rejection of the money she earned in the sex trade is not revealed
until near the end of the movie. Along the way, Grandma Maggie finds romance.

Irina Palm is a fairytale, but it could happen. It's playing at The Quad Cinema on West
13th Street in Manhattan, which has a penchant for good, offbeat
movies not found elsewhere.

Next up, Manohla leads Ed astray, and HS rattles on a la AbeSimpson while demonstrating an unnerving familiarity with SM, roofies, and... sweatshops?

Boarding GateI decided to see this film directed by Olivier Assayas after reading
Manohla Dargis's interesting review in the New York Times and also because it
was playing at one of my favorite theaters –the Cinema Village on East
12th Street off Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Dargis wrote that in the movie the
director "racks up one eye-catching incident after another (involving
sadomasochistic sex, pooling blood and smuggled drugs) that swirl on screen with
little apparent connection."

I saw the show with two friends, and when it ended, none of us could come
up with a coherent description of the story, nor did we understand much of what
took place in the individual scenes. To be fair, there are riveting moments, one involving an escape scene in
Hong Kong and another the sadomasochistic scene. Overall, however, the picture is so
disjointed that it failed for me.

Let me try to put together some of the pieces. The movie opens in what appears to be
Paris with what I believe to be a drug partnership involving an international
businessman, Miles (Michael Madsen), who is getting out of the racket. His former lover, Sandra (Asia Argento),
the central character, shows up and the two engage in an S&M tryst, which ends
in handcuffs and near asphyxiation when a belt is used to heighten the sexual
moment.

Ultimately Sandra is off to Hong Kong at the direction of Lester (Carl
Ng) and his wife, Sue (Kelly Lin), her bosses in a factory where she is
employed. Sandra later arrives in
Hong Kong, as does Lester, where chase scenes take place and murders occur. By
this time I gave up looking for a linear story. To me it turned into a Hong Kong flick
without the Kung Fu.

Directors used to call on Abe Burrows to doctor a play with a failing
storyline before it opened on Broadway. I'm thinking of offering my services to Hollywood to improve movie
scripts before their films opens. Until they hire me, take my advice on what to see and what to avoid. Boarding Gate is one to avoid.

HS said: "This was one of
the most incomprehensible films I have seen. Some films are difficult because they
are works of art making an obscure point. This was a crime film, but you couldn't tell who was good and who was
evil. It had a car chase, a
robbery, murders both planned and casual, roofies (date-rape drugs), and
bondage, but not much actual coupling. The only good part was the urban Chinese scenery, which included a
sweatshop. The movie would have
been a better travelogue without its lame plot. Weighing the reaction to the film, it
could have been called 'Boring Gate.' The title 'Waterboarding Gate' exaggerates the film's impact on the
audience." [ed. Ewww...]

[Al] Copeland added more than a sprinkle of cayenne pepper and a few
more secret Cajun-inspired hot spices, changed the name to Popeyes (he
said he was too poor to afford an apostrophe) and by the end of the
1980s owned or franchised more than 800 of the restaurants.

The
name Popeye did not come from the spinach-eating cartoon character but
from the hard-nosed film detective Popeye Doyle in The French
Connection.

Wait, so does that mean one of the secret spices is...? Nah. Couldn't be.